My Strategy for Not Doing the Dishes and a Little Bit of History

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Posted on : 9:19 AM | By : Anonymous | In : , , ,



The picture above is from Time in the Kitchen on their trip to Strawbery Banke Museum, a historical seaside village from my favorite period of history. This is a set of pewter that a family proudly displayed, even though they are used for every day. Many times during that era not everyone in the family had their own plate, so a display of shining dishes for each child would have been quite an accomplishment. It looks like a lot but people had many children and also needed serving platters. The average family during that time had 7 children (that's the average, remember), and they would capitalize on that as much as possible. While some families had children take turns doing the dishes, since everyone generally only had one plate and one fork, sometimes each child would do their own. Once they were excused from the table, each child simply stood on a stool and washed their plate in the washbasin, dried it and put it away. Makes sense, doesn't it?

This week I am going through a lot of our stuff so I am going to cut down on my dishes because I need to not rely on my dishwasher. I am going to segregate one plate, bowl, cup and a set of cutlery for each person, and each person has to wash their own after the meal. We just have so much stuff.... and it just causes clutter in my house and it clutters up my time.

Of course the other puzzle is laundry. We actually have less laundry than most people because we have less clothes... each person has about two laundry baskets of clothing. But that's 10 loads of laundry! And each person needs to wear all of that every week?! In the 19th century they had strategies to have less clothes and laundry. Each person had maybe 2 everday outfits and a Sunday best. At the same time, they wore a lot of extra layers. Those outfits rarely touched the skin, and most of the time were covered in an apron. This meant that the only thing really getting dirty were the pantaloons and chemises and long johns, and the frilly aprons. I've been working on my goal to get all the girls in dresses full time, which is getting there, slowly, lol. I am going to have just a few dresses and lots and lots of underthings and pinafores for them. I also want to do the same for myself.



I love this outfit from Clockwork Couture, although would I wear a corset on the outside of my clothes? Would I wear this all the time? lol

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